The growing oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is not only an environment danger, but also a widening political headache for President Obama, who just last month agreed to open vast stretches of the US coastline to oil drilling.
The growing oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is not only an environment danger, but also a widening political headache for President Obama, who just last month agreed to open vast stretches of the U.S. coastline to oil drilling.
White House attention to the oil leak, from a deepwater exploration well, is ramping up quickly: Obama was briefed on the cleanup operation Wednesday night and again Thursday morning, and senior administration officials are expected to brief reporters in detail at noon Thursday.
The oil spill, which occurred after an explosion on a BP rig, threatens to highlight the environmental risk of offshore exploration — a risk that critics have long warned about and that Obama tried to downplay last month when he announced the expansion of drilling.
In that speech March 31, he promised to “employ new technologies that reduce the impact of oil exploration.” He acknowledged that his decision would provoke criticism from both those who decried the expansion and those who said it did not go far enough.
“Ultimately, we need to move beyond the tired debates of the left and the right, between business leaders and environmentalists, between those who would claim drilling is a cure-all and those who would claim it has no place,” Obama said.
Now, the accident in the Gulf may provide more firepower to the critics on the left, who have for years lobbied presidents and Congress to keep in place federal moratoriums on further offshore exploration. Those moratoriums have now expired. Continue reading…
Steve Jobs on Thursday fired back at Adobe, denying that Apple eschewed Flash on the iPad to protect its App Store, and instead accusing Adobe of living in the past and not innovating to keep up with the mobile Web.
Steve Jobs on Thursday fired back at Adobe, denying that Apple eschewed Flash on the iPad to protect its App Store, and instead accusing Adobe of living in the past and not innovating to keep up with the mobile Web.
“Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues,” Jobs wrote in a note posted to the Apple Web site.
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Apple’s recently released iPad tablet does not support Adobe’s Flash technology, meaning that Flash-based videos (like those on Hulu.com) accessed in the iPad’s Web browser will not play. Companies like YouTube and Netflix have gotten around this issue by developing apps that play on the iPad, prompting Adobe to accuse Apple of ignoring Flash so it could make a few extra dollars via App Store purchases.
Jobs denied this, and said that “iPhone, iPod, and iPad users aren’t missing much video” because online video is “also available in a more modern format, H. 264,” which works on Apple products.
Jobs highlighted six specific reasons Apple takes issue with Adobe Flash.
Amid mounting frustration over taxation and banking problems, small but growing numbers of overseas Americans are taking the weighty step of renouncing their citizenship.
Amid mounting frustration over taxation and banking problems, small but growing numbers of overseas Americans are taking the weighty step of renouncing their citizenship.
“What we have seen is a substantial change in mentality among the overseas community in the past two years,” said Jackie Bugnion, director of American Citizens Abroad, an advocacy group based in Geneva. “Before, no one would dare mention to other Americans that they were even thinking of renouncing their U.S. nationality. Now, it is an openly discussed issue.”
The Federal Register, the government publication that records such decisions, shows that 502 expatriates gave up their U.S. citizenship or permanent residency status in the last quarter of 2009. That is a tiny portion of the 5.2 million Americans estimated by the State Department to be living abroad.
Still, 502 was the largest quarterly figure in years, more than twice the total for all of 2008, and it looms larger, given how agonizing the decision can be. There were 235 renunciations in 2008 and 743 last year. Waiting periods to meet with consular officers to formalize renunciations have grown.
Anecdotally, frustrations over tax and banking questions, not political considerations, appear to be the main drivers of the surge. Expat advocates say that as it becomes more difficult for Americans to live and work abroad, it will become harder for American companies to compete.
American expats have long complained that the United States is the only industrialized country to tax citizens on income earned abroad, even when they are taxed in their country of residence, though they are allowed to exclude their first $91,400 in foreign-earned income.
One Swiss-based business executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of sensitive family issues, said she weighed the decision for 10 years. She had lived abroad for years but had pleasant memories of service in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Yet the notion of double taxation — and of future tax obligations for her children, who will receive few U.S. services — finally pushed her to renounce, she said.
“I loved my time in the Marines, and the U.S. is still a great country,” she said. “But having lived here 20 years and having to pay and file while seeing other countries’ nationals not having to do that, I just think it’s grossly unfair.”
“It’s taxation without representation,” she added. Continue reading…
Republican Florida Governor Charlie Crist has decided he will run as an independent in the race to fill the Florida U.S. Senate seat, Crist allies tell Fox News. The official announcement is scheduled for Thursday at 5pm ET in St. Petersburg, Florida.
The Senate campaign has been rough and tumble for Crist, he was once the front-runner — but in recent months began trailing his GOP opponent, Tea Party favorite and former Florida State Speaker Marco Rubio. Rubio has been able to turn a 30-point deficit in the polls into a 30 point lead over Crist.
Crist has said that under no circumstance would he drop out of the race, saying he will do what is best for the voters of Florida. The governor says Republicans in Washington want him to stay in the Republican party but voters in Florida have told him they want him to run as an independent.
His campaign and the governor’s office have not officially confirmed anything, however this move by Crist has made internal communications difficult because some staff are unlikely to continue to work with Crist as an independent candidate.
The governor is expected to use much of Thursday for courtesy calls to supporters, allies and some Republican officials nationwide. Close advisers expect him to say tomorrow that he looks forward to caucusing with Republicans but that is not a certainty, there are still some issues being worked out and discussed.
Rubio has also been gaining momentum recently by clinching endorsements from big name Republicans including former Vice President Dick Cheney, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former 2008 presidential candidate and Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
“Washington is broken and Congress is already overflowing with politicians who need pollsters to tell them what to think. It certainly doesn’t need another one. Now more than ever America needs leaders with the strength of conviction. That is why I am proud to endorse Marco Rubio,” Cheney said in a statement last week.
Is it easier to build a police state from the inside out, or from the outside in? We may never know, since the architects of the Homeland Security State are doing both simultaneously.
Slavery consists of being “subject to the incessant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man.”
~ John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government
When an officer tells you to come inside and sit down, you come inside and sit down…. When an officer tells you to do something, you do it …. There is no “why” here.
~ U.S. Border Guard to a befuddled Canadian citizen arbitrarily detained while trying to visit a shopping mall in Niagara Falls, New York.
Returning to his home in Toronto following a brief visit to the States last December, author Peter Watts had the misfortune of being “randomly selected” for a search by members of the Regime’s Border Guards Directorate stationed at the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron, Michigan.
The science fiction novelist’s bad luck was exacerbated by a momentary miscommunication: He saw a “flicker of motion” outside his car that he assumed was a wave, rather than a demand to pull over. His passenger understood what was happening, and urged Watts to pull over – which he did.
“When I go like this, I’m not waving hello,” sneered the border guard, assuming the snarky tone of unmerited superiority that armed functionaries use when addressing Mundanes.
“I guess we’re not in Canada, because sometimes that means ‘hello,’” Watts replied, thereby committing a potentially fatal offense called “contempt of cop.”
He compounded that supposed sin by getting out of the car and asking what the guards were doing as they pawed through the luggage in his trunk and the bags in his back seat.
As a citizen of the freest country (by default) in North America, Watts made the critical error of assuming that he had the right to ask why his privacy was being invaded, and that his question would be answered. His question was answered with repeated demands that he get back in his car.
After Watts hesitated, one of the guards seized his arm. This provoked a predictable “flinch response” from Watts, who pulled his arm away.
For reasons that make perfect sense to those attuned with Kafka’s sense of reality, American law enforcement officers often construe the act of pulling away from their unwanted physical contact as a form of “assault” – and thus as a pretext for the summary administration of “street justice.”
First two, and then eventually three, of the stalwart guardians of our sacred northern frontier took turns pummeling the slender, mild-mannered 52-year-old man. Watts was punched, kicked, pepper-sprayed, handcuffed, then thrown wet and partially disrobed into an unheated cell. He was then interrogated, held overnight, and charged with “assaulting a federal officer” after being denied access to legal counsel (and pestered repeatedly to repudiate his Miranda rights).
After Watts’ computer, flash drives, and loose-leaf notebook were confiscated, he was unceremoniously dumped – in shirtsleeves, without so much as a windbreaker – on the Canadian side of the border.
Ironically, in his novel Maelstrom, Watts – a Hugo nominee who specializes in dystopian fiction – appears to have anticipated his experience. Describing the abuse suffered by a character at the hands of customs officials, Watts observes: “Technically, of course, it was not an assault. Both aggressors wore uniforms and badges conferring the legal right to beat whomever they chose.”
A jury of dutiful collectivist drones found Watts guilty of the supposed crime of “non-compliance with a border guard”; his “crime,” reduced to its essence, was to ask, “why?”
Although Watts could have been forced to spend years as part the world’s largest prison population, the presiding judge was content to pilfer $1,628 from the victim of the assault at the border – after treating him to a patronizing lecture about the need to be “nice” to the feral armed adolescents who constitute the State’s punitive caste.
Watts’ experience leaves a decidedly totalitarian aftertaste. Crossing the border of a totalitarian state — in either direction — is an experience fraught with visceral anxiety. Finding himself in the unwanted company of humorless, heavily armed goons of questionable competence and dubious intelligence, the traveler is vividly aware that he can be arrested, imprisoned, beaten, or even shot at whim.
The best thing to do in such circumstances, travelers are told, is to assume a posture of utter servility, meekly and quietly enduring whatever indignity inflicted on them until they are safely through the checkpoint. In coming years, it most likely won’t be necessary to visit the border in order to have a sample of what Watts endured; experiences similar to his will become increasingly commonplace for citizens and other residing legally within the United States.
Is it easier to build a police state from the inside out, or from the outside in? We may never know, since the architects of the Homeland Security State are doing both simultaneously.
Whenever a society descends into totalitarianism, the ruling clique will eventually close the borders – not just to prevent contamination by politically troublesome foreign influences, but also to prevent the egress of refugees and (most importantly) the flight of capital to more congenial economic environments.
In our case, the invasive and arbitrary powers exercised in the name of border security are becoming embedded in routine law enforcement within the interior. Although the geography of the contiguous 48 states remains unchanged, there is a very real sense in which the borders are closing in on us.
The Border Patrol – the kind folks who treated Mr. Watts to a dose of uniquely Amerikan hospitality – already carries out warrantless, suspicionless checkpoints as far as 100 miles inside the national boundary. The Department of Homeland Security insists that the Fourth Amendment proscription of “unreasonable searches and seizures” doesn’t apply to “border enforcement” searches. This would mean that the two-thirds of the U.S. population living within 100 miles of an international border are residents of a “Constitution-Free Zone.”
Tragically, the expansion of the immigration control “Constitution-Free Zone” is being propelled by some of the most outspoken critics of “big government.”
